Nancy Wilson - You And Me (2021) LP

The first Heart single to feature Nancy Wilson on lead vocals was “These Dreams,” with an iconic video that featured the guitarist and her sister Ann with peak Eighties hair, silk blazers, fog, and some more hair. But flash-forward to the present — with all that glam preserved on a high shelf like a can of hairspray collecting dust — and the song still holds up, particularly when Wilson performs it on acoustic with her husky vocals. Every second of the night, she’s lived another life.

Wilson carries this well-worn wisdom into her solo debut, You and Me. As her decision to cover Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” hints at, You and Me arrives as a healing of sorts, after more than a year of isolation and social upheaval in our country. Best of all, it was unplanned, so the record lacks the kind of “This is a pandemic gift to fans” sentiment and has more of a “stay-at-home-rocker-gets-creative” authenticity. “I’m not going to sit here and do a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle,” Wilson said, making the rest of us feel lazy.